people had bought their farms.6 There were positive and sustainable results from the resettlement process, though problems beset the resettled communities who lacked infrastructure and support networks, whether governmental or from their previous communities.7 Moreover, population density in the “communal areas,” the former tribal reserves, actually increased. More than one million families still eked out an existence on sixteen million hectares of poor land. Despite wealth in one sector of the economy, Zimbabwe remained one of the most unequal countrie s in the world. Where the blame should lie for the failure to change the racially skewed nature of land ownership in Zimbabwe has been a key point in diplomatic interactions over the current land crisis. In the first two decades of independence, Zimbabwe received financial assistance from various governments, including Britain, which provided £44 million through a “land resettlement grant” and budgetary support to the Zimbabwe government. The land resettlement grant was mostly spent by 1988 and formally expired in 1996. 8 Conditions were put on the way that the money handed over could be used. Britain in particular, especially under the Conservative Party government in power from 1979 to 1997, favored redistribution based on government purchase of land from willing sellers at full market prices, a bias that contributed to the purchase of scattered, low-quality land for resettlement. In 1997, the new British Labour Party government proposed that its new policy directing development assistance to poverty alleviation guide its support for land reform. But Minister for International Development Clare Short wrote to the Zimbabwean government stating that “we do not accept that Britain has a special responsibility to meet the costs of land purchase in Zimbabwe.”9 The donor community also raised various problems with the way in which the funds provided for land redistribution were disbursed; arguments that the Zimbabwean government rejected not least on the basis that the money paid was as a matter of historic al obligation rather than development assistance. Zimbabwe accused the new British government of following the same racist policies as its predecessors. By 1999, eleven million hectares of the richest land were still in the hands of about 4,500 commercia l farmers, the great majority of them white.10 Moreover, some farms purchased for redistribution had in fact been given to government ministers and other senior officials rather than to the landless peasantry. 11 Most rural black Zimbabweans continued to suffer immense poverty. In the face of government failure to deliver, grassroots land occupations were already taking place in the 1980s and 1990s; in many cases government security forces then removed people from the land with some brutality. This was particularly the case in the context of the conflict in the 1980s in Matabeleland between Zanu-PF and the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (Zapu), the other main liberation movement, which drew its support base from among the Ndebele.12 By late 1997 and 1998, much 6 Sam Moyo, “The Interaction of Market and Compulsory Land Acquisition Processes with Social Action in Zimbabwe’s Land Reform,” paper presented at SAPES Trust annual colloquium, Harare, September 2000, p.7. 7 See, for example, Zimbabwe: In the Party's Interest? (London: African Rights, June 1999). 8 Background Briefing, Land Resettlement in Zimbabwe (London: Department for International Development, March 2000). £20 million was provided as a specific land resettlement grant, and £27 million as budgetary support to help meet the Zimbabwe government’s own contribution to the program. £3 million was eventually returned unspent to the British government. 9 Letter from British Minister for International Development Clare Short to Zimbabwe’s Land and Agriculture Minister Kumbirai Kangai, quoted in Chris McGreal, “Blair’s worse than the Tories, says Mugabe,” Mail and Guardian (Johannesburg), December 22, 1997. 10 According to the Commercial Farmers’ Union, basing its summary on official government figures, 39,079,000 hectares of land in Zimbabwe are split among: large scale commercial sector, 11,020,000 hectares (28.2 percent of the total), of which CFU members own 8,595,000 ha; small scale sector, 1,380,000 ha (3.15 percent); communal areas, 16,350,000 ha (nearly 42 percent); resettled areas, 3,540,000 ha (9.1 percent); national parks and forest land, 6,339,000 ha (16.2 percent); state-owned land through ARDA, 250,000 ha (0.6 percent); urban land, 200,000 ha (0.5 percent). CFU statement, October 19, 2001. All CFU documents cited are available on the CFU website, www.mweb.co.zw/cfu/. 11 A list of commercial farm allocations up to 1999 was obtained by independent MP Margaret Dongo, and published in early 2000. Republished in COHRE, Land, Housing and Property Rights in Zimbabwe, annex 2. 12 See Breaking the Silence; Building True Peace: A Report on the Disturbances in Matabeleland and the Midlands 1980 to 1988 (Harare: Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, Legal Resources Foundation, February 1997). At least 3,000 people are known to have died in this violence, possibly many more. As part of the effort to resolve the conflict, Zapu later merged with Zanu-PF. Human Rights Watch 7 March 2002, Vol. 14, No. 1 (A)